The weird regard of procedural cities

[Lantiz]

Hello guys and gals.


As some may know (or not) I'm currently working on a roguelike game in MV.


I want to ask about your thoughts regarding how to feature a "main town" (or city) for the game.


Let me explain...


I'm a person who grew up playng the Harvest Moon series, and one of the features that makes me love it so much is the social side in which the player has to engage the other villagers. This always makes me feel welcome again whenever I start playing, like if the game village was a place where I was born and the villagers were my old friends.


Now, In most games we play nowadays we don't see something like that, we always have an adventure, we always face dangers and make some friends during our journey, but we almost never have a place to return, like, we never "go home" to find our fellas after facing a danger and saving the world. And this is something I want to have in my game...


I want to have many adventures and after every one of them I want to have a place to go back and feel some emotion in it, like getting home after a long trip. And so, to take a break from the fight and enjoy the peace that I helped to achieve.


But there comes the doubt... as a roguelike I already have a city map generator, which mean I can generate a new village everytime a player start the game, and this city will be his home.


The question is: will the random town with different people every time be as outstanding as a "fixed" town that is always the same with the same old people that you already know?


In which kind of town would you like to play better?


EDIT: Im sorry I could swear I started the topic on game mechanics... looks like I missclicked.

 

[mlogan]

I've moved this thread to Game Mechanics. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

So one of the problems with any sort of randomly generated anything is that they can feel like if you've seen one variation of the random town, you've seen them all.  It doesn't matter if the weapons shop is sometimes on the edge of town or sometimes in the middle, or if the item shop is sometimes manned by NPC#2 and sometimes NPC#5.  Once the player gets a feel for how the randomizer is going to randomize things, they all start to feel the same.  Even the mighty Dwarf Fortress falls victim to this problem.  You've seen one dwarven mine shaft or goblin stronghold and you've seen them all.  


If you really want a randomly generated town to work, there needs to be a true feeling of uniqueness, or an emotional connection to the place or to the people in it.  Uniqueness can be felt by having enough random possibilities that each random town feels like it will never exist again.  An emotional connection can be created by a fear of loss, for example, there's something special about that specific combination of random variables that you would hate to lose, that you want to protect.  Ironically, if you expect a lot of replays, you can make randomly generated things more interesting by making them mostly boring.  When something interesting does show up, it feels more valuable.  If you can really pull it off, a randomly generated town can create an incredibly emotional experience.  I still remember that time in Dwarf Fortress when a female elven swordmaster-bard came strolling into my fortress and got herself elected as mayor, only to be killed off a few seasons later when one of the local trees sucked her up and starved her to death.  


Another way of doing it could be to start all towns with the same seed, and have them react to things that the player does.  For example, if the player buys a lot of weapons, the weapon shop grows bigger, the weapon shop family gets wealthier and more intimate with you.  Or it could be something like various guilds are competing with each other, and doing quests for one guild inherently weakens the standing of the other guilds, so you can offer yourself exclusively to one guild or try to pit all of them against each other or attempt to organize an alliance between your two favorite guilds or betray your original guild halfway through the game and sell all their secrets to someone else.  So even if the same Harold is present in every game, he might end up being your best friend or your arch nemesis depending on what you do.  In a rogue-like, a few random events happening to the player or to the city in the background can push things in interesting new directions too.  For example, the passing of a comet might strengthen a fire-user guild, or the guilds might call a truce to fight an invasion of vampires.  

 

[Lantiz]

Woah a lot of good text.


Thanks for taking your time to share your knowledge.

So one of the problems with any sort of randomly generated anything is that they can feel like if you've seen one variation of the random town, you've seen them all.  It doesn't matter if the weapons shop is sometimes on the edge of town or sometimes in the middle, or if the item shop is sometimes manned by NPC#2 and sometimes NPC#5.  Once the player gets a feel for how the randomizer is going to randomize things, they all start to feel the same.  Even the mighty Dwarf Fortress falls victim to this problem.  You've seen one dwarven mine shaft or goblin stronghold and you've seen them all.  

This is exactly what I fear, there will be a moment when no one will care for what's happening in the city, I guess.

If you really want a randomly generated town to work, there needs to be a true feeling of uniqueness, or an emotional connection to the place or to the people in it.  Uniqueness can be felt by having enough random possibilities that each random town feels like it will never exist again.  An emotional connection can be created by a fear of loss, for example, there's something special about that specific combination of random variables that you would hate to lose, that you want to protect.  Ironically, if you expect a lot of replays, you can make randomly generated things more interesting by making them mostly boring.  When something interesting does show up, it feels more valuable.  If you can really pull it off, a randomly generated town can create an incredibly emotional experience.  I still remember that time in Dwarf Fortress when a female elven swordmaster-bard came strolling into my fortress and got herself elected as mayor, only to be killed off a few seasons later when one of the local trees sucked her up and starved her to death.  

You make a good point again, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make it unique for every new game, and what you just said about the connection really opens my mind.


My first thought was to create somehow unique NPC's. Like so they have a history, and "it" actually want or need some kind of interaction with the player, that when the player decides to help out it would then be the main quest... for instance, the blacksmith that lost his son in a dungeon and while the game goes the player find out more and more about the blacksmith familly and his son and how could he help.


So everytime the player has to leave the city hes going to be on a big quest that connects him with the selected NPC, in this case, the blacksmith.


Seems great, right? But by starting the game again and generating a new world, there's a chance that this specific NPC would be there... again. And I don't know if that would be a problem... what do you think?


Anyway I dont find myself putting lots of boring content on the game, I wold not play a game like that because I get bored too easy :/

Another way of doing it could be to start all towns with the same seed, and have them react to things that the player does.  For example, if the player buys a lot of weapons, the weapon shop grows bigger, the weapon shop family gets wealthier and more intimate with you.  Or it could be something like various guilds are competing with each other, and doing quests for one guild inherently weakens the standing of the other guilds, so you can offer yourself exclusively to one guild or try to pit all of them against each other or attempt to organize an alliance between your two favorite guilds or betray your original guild halfway through the game and sell all their secrets to someone else.  So even if the same Harold is present in every game, he might end up being your best friend or your arch nemesis depending on what you do.  In a rogue-like, a few random events happening to the player or to the city in the background can push things in interesting new directions too.  For example, the passing of a comet might strengthen a fire-user guild, or the guilds might call a truce to fight an invasion of vampires.  

I like this approach a lot, but Im not sure about having the conflicts unless its a "healty" thing, like taking the guild idea for instance:


Lets say we have a board for missions (fairy tail? haha) and then other villagers also want the missions and you need to keep a good rank between the villagers so you can get better jobs, and the more you do for the village the more you get famous and people would like to take your place aswell and give you better pricess, and find new lovers... but it does not mean they would kill you for having your place (maybe? haha would be a surprise to "wake up dead")


About changing the village... I'm not sure about how I could achieve this in RPG Maker, Idont like the idea of making lots of maps for each different play style, that would be a big permutation unless I could change the map object everytime changing only one building. Not sure, maybe I can figure it out... 


The commet idea is nice aswell, maybe to make a good use of seasons? Like in summer, fire enemies gets powerful and stuff like that.


I find some event creation to get complicated because of the procedural aspect,


My mind is now making me focus on small events that can make a difference. Another example:


While hunting in the forest the player helps a little boy whos being attacked by a wolf pack. When he gets to the city he find out that the boy has a very pretty sister who is also very grateful for the player saving the boy. Now the player will start a bound with the girl because, ofcourse, all badass adventurers wants to get laid right? (it's a joke, but still...) And they will become friends and etc... so now I just need another event outside the village to kill the girl, and BAM! 


Now this way I achieve what you first proposed (in which I was missing) and does not seems to be so hard to pull of: creating bounds.


The point I make about this example it the small amount of eventing needed, I can actually think about it:


A text for the boy, some wolfs by his side, change a switch if the boy is alive when I leave the map, about the sister, if switch is on, shes visible, turns another switch. When outside the map, an invisible event is now visible because of the new switch, and if the player interacts with it, the girl dies


I think this kind of eventing could work in a procedural town.


Anyway, too much text right? hahaha


Thanks a lot for the ideas.

 

[LaFlibuste]

AcetheSuperVillain has some good ideas but what I am going to suggest here will likely go in a completely different direction. I think the key lies in identifying the core elements you want enjoy so. You say this:

I'm a person who grew up playng the Harvest Moon series, and one of the features that makes me love it so much is the social side in which the player has to engage the other villagers. This always makes me feel welcome again whenever I start playing, like if the game village was a place where I was born and the villagers were my old friends.

The question you ought to be asking yourself is why does this village feels like home? Why do the the villagers feel like old friends? How do you define home or old friends?


The hypothesis I want to run along with is the one of familiarity. The villagers feel like old friends because you know them. You see them all the time, they have daily routines, worries, conversations, there are events involving them. You know those, you know those stories and you know their appearance, etc. The fact that replaying the game you encounter the same old villagers with their worries, antics and habits also plays to this effect. Here are a few distinguishable elements:


1) The characters (and the village) are relatable because you can recognize them, you know them. Both within a same playthrough and from playthrough to playthrough. If you want to replicate the feeling of familiaity, I would personnally argue against randomized characters. They will be more fleshed out, deeper and make more sense if they're not random, anyway. You might even have portraits for all of them to make them feel even more important, which would be a nightmare if they were generated randomly. Maybe you could have their roles within the city random, but you'd have to be cautious because one's job/role ties in closely with his character, background, etc. As for the village, maybe you could have to specific layout be random, but it'd be more aesthetic/stylistic purposes and not add much to anything aside from that.


2) The characters are also relatable and familiar because they have routines and variety. Harvest Moon divides them through different means: season, weekday, daytime, weather. So know on a rainy summer sunday night, Karen is going to be at the inn chugging pints with Rick (for example). It makes those two feel more alive, more real, more relatable, more likable. You can also learn these routines, which makes the player grow more familiar with them. Thus, in your game, you might want to have some sort of time scale for your shops opening hours and off days, for character routines, for specific events (festivals?), etc. Weekdays and weather are easily incorporated and implemented (although weather actually having a gameplay incidence like in Harvest Moon might be desirable if you are going to include it). A more sensitive one to add for gameplay reasons is having months and specific dates: this works especially well in a farming game since the season and the idea of the cycle and starting over are central to them theme and gameplay but this might be more artificial in a roguelike. Then there is daytime, which is harder to implement because of technical reasons. Maybe you don't need specific hours though, maybe you could have broad day times like morning, afternoon, evening and night. Switching between them could be done either through a real time clock, number of steps taken, number of maps visited, specific milestones achieved, etc. So to sum this point up, I'd say having some sort of regularity and routine (although with a bit of variety) but be wary that these things you might add in tie in well with your game's theme and gameplay. It works for Harvest Moon, a farming game, it might no work well for a dungeon-delving-centered RPG.

3) In Harvest Moon, the village is central thematically. The player will not only constantly bump into villagers, he will have reasons to go after them, be it to shop, court, win prizes in festivals, unlock stuff, etc. How will you create this need to interact in your game? In most RPGs, towns serve two roles: service hub to sell loot, buy better gear and recover (rest at the inn), and plot progression. But once the village's plot has been played through and you've outgrown the gear offered there, what reason is there really to return and engage with its residents? Okay, maybe your village's shops will upgrade their gear, but even then, if you only go to upgrade/restock/rest, who cares about it?


4) The village and its inhabitant grow with you and is influenced by your actions (at least a little). You are building something with them. This goes a little in the same direction as AcetheSuperVillain's suggestion. The extent of your influence really depends on the focus you want to give this. In Harvest Moon the village is central to the theme, but not gameplay, which translates in your actions having a little impact on the city (which girl marries you instead of their default love interest, if some characters leave or stay, etc.) but really, aside from your wife maybe, it's pretty much cosmetic, it's really not central gameplay stuff. Or it'll give you some optionnal unlocks like better honey, recipees, etc. Fluff stuff. What Ace suggests is much more central, it feels a bit like how the first GTA game handled stuff in which the standing with the three factions was pretty much central, unavoidable gameplay.

So to sum up, I think if you want to achieve the feeling of "home" and "old friends", you have to create well-fleshed-out, recognisable characters who have to feel alive (routines with variety in them). The player also needs to have a reason to go interact with the characters and he has to feel like his action impacts them and the village (if ever so slightly).


I'll make a last point/warning that has been more or less recurrent throughout: whatever you add in your game, it has to be tied to both theme AND gameplay. If you add a calendar for the sake of it but it has no real impact on anything gameplay related aside from the characters' routines, it'll feel artificial and fall flat. Nobody will care and look at it. If you add a plethora of awesome characters that the player has no reason to go talk to, who cares? Worse, even: you like the idea of a central village that feels like home, but does this fit the game you want to make? If you are creating a "traditionnal" roguelike with permadeath, randomization and relatively short playthroughs, having a deep, engaging village with recognisable characters might be a waste of time, as you will likely only ever go once or twice and usually die in the game's first week anyway and start over, never having time to build something with the characters. So if you DO create this deep, central village, it has to be central in the plot, dungeons, quests, gameplay, everything has to revolve around it (to varying degrees). Does this serve you game? That's for you to answer

 

[Lantiz]

So awesome. Thanks for taking your time.


Most of what you said is actually what I'm trying to figure out, see what would work or not, and how to make it work...


And you are totally right, I guess the main problem is define what I want, but for me it's how to work it out.


Simply put: I want renewable fantasy lives that I can live when I'm tired of the real one or the currently loaded.


I want to find a way to mix the roguelike genere with some sort of social interaction... being the lone hero forever is not funny.


And so I want those interactions to be good, memorable and if possible different in each generated world.


Until now i didn't add permadeath, but it currently features a single save, which can be loaded but cannot be duplicated, so you can't change your previous actions.


This way you will keep the village and the progress as in where you last saved.


So here we go...


1) I liked a lot what you just said and I can immagine working this out using lots of distinct NPCs and sorting out which ones would be available. maybe leave some fixed, like the merchants which are important to be easilly reconocible. But I still have the problem of the other NPCs being useless... how could I make them useful?


2) I dont think it would be a nice idea to keep changing the time, but the seasons would make sense... and adventure can last for years... or not, having a random season when you are back to town and have the season to relate to a game mechanic would be nice and strategic.


But I agree, the dailly schedule would have a wonderful impact... to know the habits of the NPCs seems to be a nice way to keep the player attention as long as theres a reason for that. But what reason could it be?


On the other hand, you gave me a hell of an idea: to use the persona approach and change the day time based in actions or interactions with the NPCs, limiting the amount of NPCs I can talk to everyday. I can think a lot of cool stuff this way.


3) I've been thinking of using the village for the usual stuff (buy / sell / recover) but also have some other kind of gameplay, to take a break of the combat. To have some kind of crafting system so the player can spend the resources found in the adventure, and maybe some more stuff... minigames to give good items. Marriage and making it have a direct impact on the game, like taking your wife with you the next time you leave town.


Also a quest system would also be useful, I like the guild idea proposed by @AceTheSuperVillain 


4) This part is not going well, I really cant figure out a way to make the action of the villagers chage toward the player actions and still have some impact in the game. As stated before, only way I could think is to get random quests, but they would get old really soon.


I dont mind the need of changing the city, but maybe find a way to have something to happen one time or another... like a holliday event to have some fun, for instance to have homebrew drinks championship that improves your resistence toward poison if you win....


I dont think its a problem for the NPCs to be mostly cosmetic as long it feels alive and makes the player want to have an interaction


I guess in general, as long as there's something to keep the player interested in being around the town, it's fine.


In some point the player will want to leave and have some fight, but then he'll get tired and want to go home and there needs to be something to do in his home you know? 


Actually after you both opened my eyes, looks like it's going to be much more difficult than I fisrt immagined.


Thanks a lot for the comments, I'm liking it and having some good ideas... keep it alive please.

 

[YoraeRasante]

I have an idea, but it would mean a lot of work...


Why not, instead of randomly generated, you don't make a bunch of possible villages, each with their own NPCs and sidestories... and each time the player starts a new game he ends up in one of the villages?


That would allow you to make the villages more unique, and each village would be exclusive to that save file (as much as you made villages).


You could also make the village grow according to the sidequests the player does - do this and the town builds a pool, so this or that to choose what will be built on this spot...


Also, since you were inspired by Harvest Moon, why not give the player a harvest moon-esque farm to plant useful items to take in the dungeons?

 

[LaFlibuste]

Okay so from your response I'll try to identify what you aim towards and present a more developed idea.

The end goal is:

1) Making the village a central part of the theme/gameplay;
2) Making the villagers feel like family;
3) Keeping some degree of randomness to the village to keep the roguelike aesthetic;
4) Keep in mind the game is a roguelike, so the gameplay is mostly a dungeon delving RPG in a randomized environments/through random quests;

The main desired elements outlined are:

1) Randomness, in quests and in the village;
2) Having villagers that are still recognizable and have relatively deep backgrounds/personalities etc.;


2a) Maybe have some sort of schedule or timescape to make the villagers feel more alive/real, force to player to invest themselves in their lives;
3) The village has to cover basic RPG needs (shops, inn, etc.);


4) Have a way to develop relationships with the villagers/develop the village;

So here's a more or less complete suggestion, mix-and-match how you like from there

First I'd like to outline the game's theme as I envision it. The village has to be central here. The idea is heavily inspired by Harvest Moon: let's make an Harvest Moon-ish roguelike. Let's say the theme is you were appointed as local lord (or any other title you think fits better. Protector maybe?) to a very backwater village to which you are a total outsider (or assume your Harvest Moonishness and say your family is from the village and/or you visited as a kid, but essentially grew up somewhere else). As such, you have let's say 3 years to develop the village by a certain margin (you would have to have noticeable indicators for village growth). This is a very backwater village, so there's barely any militia, you are pretty much an adventurer and must do the grunt adventuring work by yourself.

Let's first deal with randomness in the village/villagers. Here's the approach I suggest:


The village could be generated from premade maps, so it would always be a bit random in layout and content but through some algorithm you can still control what's in there to some extent. The villagers should not be totally random but need not necessarily be village-wide fixed (like designing 5 wholes villages). I'd suggest creating in advance 2, 3 or 4 dozens NPC families, or sets of 2-4 NPCs with each their stories. Let me give you an example of how this could work:


At game start, the village is generated randomly. 1 of 5 possible weapon shops is selected, one of 5 armor shop, etc. for each kind of shop/inn you need, plus maybe 2-9 general non-utility (or fluff) buildings (for a total of ~12?), all of this is mixed together and a village is generated. Now to fill all of those buildings 4-6 NPC "families" including a datable girl are randomly picked, 4-6 families containing a boy for those girls (possibly datable boys if you want to go that way) (as many boy & girls families), boys & girls are randomly paired in eventual couples that will form if you don't interfere (or if you help them out, even, maybe), plus 0-4 non-datable families. Each family is assigned to a building/job. So in a first game, Karen's family might work the magic shop and she will eventually date Rick from the stables, in a second she works the item shop and is set to marry Grey the inn keeper's son, and in a third she's not even a part of the village.


Next, timescale and NPC routines. In a scenario where you have 3 years to develop the town, it makes sense to have a calendar with weekdays/dates & seasons. For simplicity's sake I'd avoid having a precise clock, but having some form of daytime would be nice for routine variety. These could happen on different clocks depending on criterias. For example: When in buildings in the village, the clock is stopped. When in the village but outside, you have mornings/afternoons/evening/nights and the switch is determined either by a real-time clock or by amount of steps taken. When exploring the world map, you have only whole days and X step is a day. Or maybe each step changes from morning to afternoon, to evening, to night, etc. Or maybe it's still a real-time clock, if you prefer it that way. Or maybe it's not an explorable world map but some sort of picture and you just pick destination in a menu: going to the orcish stronghold by the river takes 4 days, period. When exploring a dungeon, maybe it's only day/night and it is controlled either by steps taken, amount of battles fought or a real-time clock. Although the morning, afternoon, etc pattern could also still work. You should have the option in a dungeon to rest ("camp") to recover, which would speed time (like camping in morning has you resuming your adventure in the evening). If different time periods are noticeable in dungeons, it should definitely have some impact on gameplay. Spawn chance of wandering salesmen & fellow adventurer? Amount/difficulty of monsters encountered? Better drops from battle? Bonuses/maluses to certain spell school / skill types?. Anyway, the exact system remains to be determined by you, but this allows you to 1) have varied NPC routines within the village and 2) have some sort of calendar with events and festivals to make your village feel more alive. This calendar could of course be randomly generated too. It would however need to be less densely packed than in Harvest Moon, though, to allow for the time needed for adventuring and the player not feeling like he is constantly missing out. Like 1-3 event per month (not counting birthdays). To add depth and relevance to this mechanic, maybe certain quests/areas are only available at certain times of the year, maybe you record quests in a journal and they eventually expire, forcing to make choices and possibly missing out, etc.

A warning about town developing, though: make sure it is mostly done through quests and adventuring, don't go overboard with the "lord" thing. It's not a village management/building game, the player is not really "mayor", there should not be much micro-managing (if any). Basically your adventuring and relationships should allow certain NPCs to develop their part of the town but they should do so mostly autonomously, you shouldn't be managing a budget and identifying orientations/development projects. The village and its development is a central thematic element but not really a core gameplay one: the core gameplay is adventuring and battling monsters. Never forget this.


Last but not least, building relationships with the villagers and the relevance of it. First off, it could be done through a variety of ways: gifting stuff, doing certain quests (like maybe the orcs by the river built a dam and demolishing it brings back water to the village and nets you points with the farmer in particular), assisting to certain events/giving the correct answers, etc. This of course give points towards village development (your 3 year project, remember). It could allow for a variety of other uses: upgrades in the shops, rebates in the shops, certain recipes if you include a crafting system, acquiring certain upgrades for your home to help in crafting or various other ways, recruiting villagers to join your party in adventuring (maybe not every one, and them being wounded or dying should have dire consequences), marrying of course, unlocking some quests or new specific areas, being taught certain skills or being gifted specific rare/unique pieces of equipment, etc. Building and developing your home could also have advantages, like not having to rest in the inn, unlocking crafting, having a dummy or whatever to train in specific skills or raise certain stats slowly, have your own stables (see below), etc.


Ideas for stuff there could be in your village: Weapon shop, armor shop & accessory shop (or divide them by the less traditional but more realistic blacksmith/tanner/tailor/fletcher/poleturner/ringsmith, etc. (Search for medieval artisans and crafts for more ideas!); if you go this way, maybe you don't need one of each in each village but only 1-3 weapon options and 1-2 armor options for each random village (like this village happens to have a fletcher, poleturner and sword smith for weapons and offers leather armors through the tanner and robe through the tailor). Other options not available in shops can be crafted when you have a house with the required equipment, found in dungeons or maybe bought from travelling merchants encountered randomly during quests), item shop (or herbalist/apothecary), magic shop (or library), a dojo/training grounds of sorts for physical skills, an inn for resting, maybe a doctor for more serious wounds that can't be slept through, maybe a church or temple of sorts for afflictions of the soul, maybe a mercenary guild or place to recruit party members, maybe a stable to acquire mounts that allow you to waste less time when travelling the world map, maybe a general store for general adventuring/camping supplies and/or food, if you decide this is required for camping (resting)/being away from the village for long periods of time (also a place to get some more basic crafting supplies?), etc.

So basically: the main thing is adventuring in random dungeons but quests should revolve around the village, which you will get back to periodically to restock and develop. Doing so is not only the main objective but will give various boons to help to player in his dungeon delving (but advantages given by the village should always be oriented towards adventuring, which is the real core gameplay element). To me, this feels like a more or less complete proposition and I feel like it could make a decently tightly packed gaming experience that would make sense. Each mechanic added in there feels like a core one, it ties in with the theme and has a serious an noticeable impact on gameplay. What do you think?

 

[Lantiz]

First of I want to thank you guys for helping so much.


Seccond, I'm sorry... I spent more than one hour writing my answer and when I was almost finishing I missclicked an closed my browser....


Now, I'll try and make a sum, but please remember it was not so simple, I really like a lot of your ideas and I'm mostly decided about using some.


Maybe tomorrow I write it all over again.


About the farm site that @Waterguy suggested, I like it and I think about doing it, but not now, probably when the core features of the game are done, then it comes as a bonus.


I will probably have a map for the player housing, because of some other aspects below.


So basically, I dont feel like using pre made buildings or towns, the idea is actually pretty good, would be remarcable, but I guess it's really too much work and I'm not a wonderful mapper xD


Anyway, reading and thinking, I thought a way of using the random generated town.


I'm going to use @LaFlibuste approach of making famillies having a few fixed "head of familly" NPCs, with little changes and spawn those on the building.


The 3 years scope seems to be a good way for limiting the game time and defining a final objective, but I'm not yet sure if I will use something like that, I'll let to think about the game's ending a little later...


For now I'll try to develop some remarcable quests that trigger something in related NPCs, even if the player didn't get the quest from the NPC itself.


Regarding the micro management, I really don't like that (not the idea, but the mechanic), I feel like its tiresome...we already fight lots of troubles regarding management daily right? haha


The player role will be something like a mercenery (with a better lore ofcourse xD) who helps the NPCs to improve the village and impact on their relationship with the player.


I decided to use the persona approach as a timescale (changing the entire daytime after some action).


It will be possible to have NPC schedulle without worring about pathfinding (the buldings are not in their own map, they are on the town map already), and some other problems,


The daytime while adventuring will change at every map transition (like going from floor 1 to floor 2).


I'll be using (almost) fixed maps for callendar events, and spread the main people of the town across then, but they will never talk about familly in this map, so it does not matter the famillies here.


Alas I'm not sure if they will actually reffer to each other ever... unless some part of the families are tied to each other, which is what I want to try for now.


Now the callendar... thanks to @AcetheSuperVillain words, I think the season approach is great and I can have the season to impact in some core mechanic, like buffs and which maps are accessible.


About the relationship, I like @LaFlibuste idea, I'm going to use partially, the questing influence seems amazing and I think it's fairly possible to achieve.


The points system seems be enough for developing the relationship, it wont be a very deep feature, but will be funny as each NPC will have its personality.


I won't (for now) be using player crafted stuff, maybe something like a kitchen or a lab for some buff dishes, but nothing too fancy.


The resources acquired will be used in NPCs for revealing new items, interactions and maybe quests (lore and background), I guess this way the player will have a reason to go back to town.


Regarding the buildings, I'm reading toward the default ones related to the core RPG Maker style.


My systems are actually using the most of what is already done, including the combat (processing only, Im not using the default turn based combat as it's a roguelike).


The merchant NPCs can vary as I can have lots of versions of the same map to be generated with different NPCs, I'll probabbly be limited by financial aspects (I comission an artist) but this is going to work and be random enough I guess.


But honestly I think the merchants are good to be fixed so the player can look at the map and know exactly who he wants to interact with.


Well that's it, hope I covered everything.


If possible I would like to know your thoughts about my choices, and maybe polish them a little more.

What do you think?

I think it's awesome, very detailed and helped me a lot.


Now I also want to ask: what do you think of my decisions?


Thanks guys, in the end I spent more 50 minutes xD.

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

About changing the village... I'm not sure about how I could achieve this in RPG Maker, Idont like the idea of making lots of maps for each different play style, that would be a big permutation unless I could change the map object everytime changing only one building. Not sure, maybe I can figure it out... 


The commet idea is nice aswell, maybe to make a good use of seasons? Like in summer, fire enemies gets powerful and stuff like that.


I find some event creation to get complicated because of the procedural aspect,

It needn't be super complicated.  For things like the weapon shop, I would make the shop look the same on the outside and build maybe 5 different versions of the inside of the shop based on how much you've leveled up the shop.  So if the shop is level 3, the door takes you to the level 3 shop, etc.  You could do a few simple cosmetic changes to the outside with events that check for the current shop level, like cracks and vines at low levels and fancy signs and bunny girls at high levels.  


Seasonal changes can have their own appeal, but they're not going to give a particular adventure a unique flavor.  When I think rogue-likes, I'm thinking of games that are short and sweet and are played over and over again.  Something like a fire-comet passing over should be something that doesn't happen in every single playthrough.  (As far as that suggestion, I was imagining the world of Avatar.  The Fire Benders gain extra power from Dozin's Comet upsetting the balance between the 4 elements and making them the antagonists of the show.  I suppose I'm thinking of a "random plot generator" that's kinda like a 4X game AI.  If one entity gains the upper hand, it starts to take control of everything, so a random event like a fire comet that improves the power of the fire people would set a particular plot in motion so that the player has the choice of fighting off the fire people to restore balance or joining the fire people and benefiting from their new power.)  


For guilds, I was not thinking that there is only one town guild, like in Fairy Tail, but more like a bunch of competing entities within the town.  For example, I always liked the premise of Radiata Stories, where the city is controlled by 5 entities, the Warrior Guild, Thief Guild, Wizard Guild, Cleric Guild and the Knights.  Each guild basically controls its own mini-city within the walls of Radiata City.  The shops in the Warrior Guild district will have a different selection of items than the shops in the Wizard Guild district.  In Radiata Stories, the guilds don't really declare war on each other, but you're often left with the impression that they don't get along or at least don't agree with each other.  (Although I guess members of the Warrior Guild do end up fighting members of the Thief Guild)  Radiata Stories would be a great research project for a randomly generated city.  It's not random at all, but there's so much diversity and player choices that the city feels very alive.  

 

[Lantiz]

It needn't be super complicated.  For things like the weapon shop, I would make the shop look the same on the outside and build maybe 5 different versions of the inside of the shop based on how much you've leveled up the shop.  So if the shop is level 3, the door takes you to the level 3 shop, etc.  You could do a few simple cosmetic changes to the outside with events that check for the current shop level, like cracks and vines at low levels and fancy signs and bunny girls at high levels.  

Yeah, this really looks simple, thanks for the idea.


Even tho, I think I already found my way

Seasonal changes can have their own appeal, but they're not going to give a particular adventure a unique flavor.  When I think rogue-likes, I'm thinking of games that are short and sweet and are played over and over again.  Something like a fire-comet passing over should be something that doesn't happen in every single playthrough.

Actually I can now think of some good things this could add to a roguelike. Mostly regarding elemental stuff.

As far as that suggestion, I was imagining the world of Avatar.  The Fire Benders gain extra power from Dozin's Comet upsetting the balance between the 4 elements and making them the antagonists of the show.  I suppose I'm thinking of a "random plot generator" that's kinda like a 4X game AI.  If one entity gains the upper hand, it starts to take control of everything, so a random event like a fire comet that improves the power of the fire people would set a particular plot in motion so that the player has the choice of fighting off the fire people to restore balance or joining the fire people and benefiting from their new power.

I understand. To be honest, this would not be far from what I thought about the seasons, as I stated above... just an example.

For guilds, I was not thinking that there is only one town guild, like in Fairy Tail, but more like a bunch of competing entities within the town.  For example, I always liked the premise of Radiata Stories, where the city is controlled by 5 entities, the Warrior Guild, Thief Guild, Wizard Guild, Cleric Guild and the Knights.  Each guild basically controls its own mini-city within the walls of Radiata City.  The shops in the Warrior Guild district will have a different selection of items than the shops in the Wizard Guild district.  In Radiata Stories, the guilds don't really declare war on each other, but you're often left with the impression that they don't get along or at least don't agree with each other.  (Although I guess members of the Warrior Guild do end up fighting members of the Thief Guild)  Radiata Stories would be a great research project for a randomly generated city.  It's not random at all, but there's so much diversity and player choices that the city feels very alive.  

Oh I see, I really meant one guild, but not exactly a team. It would be a place in which any person signed to the guild would be able to receive missions and also compete for getting the better jobs. I just took away the guild involvement and the goal as one entity, here instead each mercenery would have his own objective and laws.


I'll have a look on Radiata Stories, I will like it from what you said and hope to get some nice ideas.


And I agree, maybe there's no need to be all random, but changeable. It's a nice approach.


Again, thanks a lot for taking your time.


Would like to know a bit about your thoughts regarding my prior post tho.

 

[LaFlibuste]

Okay, some thoughts on your ideas. But before I write anything else, I just want to state the followings: this is your project, not mine, and as such you are entitled to make judgement calls about your game's design. The bottom line will sometimes be different preferences and you, as the person who will actually put in all the hard work, should get to pick what will make the cut or not. So take everything I write with a grain of salt
 

About the farm site that @Waterguy suggested, I like it and I think about doing it, but not now, probably when the core features of the game are done, then it comes as a bonus

I think a crafting system would be more appropriate for an RPG/roguelike, but a farming thing works too, as long as you remember those principles I talked about earlier:
1) Farming is not a core gameplay feature, it's a mini-game or a side thing at best and should be treated as such.
2) Whatever rewards this gives should tie in with the core gameplay feature: adventuring.

For now I'll try to develop some remarcable quests that trigger something in related NPCs, even if the player didn't get the quest from the NPC itself

Note that I spoke a lot about quests earlier. "Quests" need not be formal quests with definite objectives given by a specific NPC. I'm not a huge roguelike player but from my little experience there often are no quests, you are instead thrown somewhere and you have to figure things out and create the narrative by yourself. If I retake my orcs building a dam on the river example, you don't necessarily need to have spoken with the farmer who says "Will you please destroy the orcish dam for a hundred bucks?", maybe you just have an orcish stronghold somewhere next to a dam, you explore the place and you can decide to destroy it by yourself, which prompts a favorable response from villagers. But you might never have been formally sent there on a quest, you just took an initiative. The river might as well have overflown and wrecked the crop or destroyed a house or something, for all you know. It's a much easier way to handle "quests" in a randomized/roguelike environment, I think. Although to be fair a mix of both could be good, I guess. In any event, your idea works, it was just a comment.

Regarding the micro management, I really don't like that (not the idea, but the mechanic), I feel like its tiresome...we already fight lots of troubles regarding management daily right? haha


The player role will be something like a mercenery (with a better lore ofcourse xD) who helps the NPCs to improve the village and impact on their relationship with the player.

This works, just think ahead of the reason you have that improving the village thing with X years to do it. A mercenary doesn't sound like an official sent by the king. Then again, maybe the villagers just granted you a plot of land and give themselves 3 years to evaluate if you are a positive influence on the village or if they give you the boot. Just think of something you like, anyway.

I decided to use the persona approach as a timescale (changing the entire daytime after some action)

Well I honestly think this is a bit weird, it's definitely not something common and I'm not sure how it'll work out but maybe it can work. It's not what I'd do but it's worth a try, I guess.

It will be possible to have NPC schedulle without worring about pathfinding (the buldings are not in their own map, they are on the town map already), and some other problems

Agreed, screw transitions and path finding. Having NPCs walk to their new destinations across the village is a nice touch but it'd definitely be a technical challenge, they might as well teleport everywhere for all you care. Just maybe have them walk to the nearest exit when they're leaving somewhere the player is because it'd be weird if they just vanished after you finished talking to them because it suddenly is the evening.

The daytime while adventuring will change at every map transition (like going from floor 1 to floor 2)

This can work if the maps are big enough and all more or less the same size I guess. I'd still have picked another way to measure (time, steps or battles), but this works too.

I'll be using (almost) fixed maps for callendar events, and spread the main people of the town across then, but they will never talk about familly in this map, so it does not matter the famillies here

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "fixed map for calendar events". You mean if for example there is a jousting competition on the calendar, it'll always happen in the town square and the layout will always be the same? Makes sense to me if it's what you were saying. I don't see how it'd be a technical challenge to have the villagers have personalized text for these events, but villagers in Harvest Moon often talk about the event going on while attending it instead of babbling about their relationships, so it could make sense anyway.

Alas I'm not sure if they will actually reffer to each other ever... unless some part of the families are tied to each other, which is what I want to try for now

Okay, I'm honestly not sure what your skill level is, so the following is not meant to insult your intelligence if it seems obvious, but from a few comments you've made I think it could help you if I outlined two ways you could build your characters.

The first method is possibly the easiest, most flexible one but it requires some scripting know-how. For each character you create a big array variable (an array is like a box containing variables. You could have an array of arrays. For a visual example, picture a house, which is an array. In your house, you have 5 rooms, 5 more arrays. In each rooms, you have a certain amount of bookcases or whatever, new arrays. Each book case has a certain number of tablets, which have a certain number of separators, which hold books within which there are chapters, which are your end variable. It's like an information in a box in a box in a box ad infinitum, as needed. Or like the folder structure on your hard drive. Depending on languages, depending on languages they can usually be either named or numbered). So let's say we are creating a Karen array (or folder). In there, you could have the "relationship" and "dialogue" arrays and a "friendship" variable. In relationship, you could have any kind of relation you'll need for Karen: father, mother, (future)boyfriend, etc. These can either be fixed or randomly picked from other selected villagers at game start. So if the list of randomly selected boys is Rick, Stan, Moe & Jack, one of those could be picked at random and registered in karen.relationships.boyfriend (exact way to write the variable depends on the language used). karen.frienship is used to track how much she likes you, it starts at 10 and can go from 0 to 20 and is nudged by 0.05 (or whatever) everytime you do something she likes or not (might move faster or slower depending on the action, giving a flower she likes might be +0.05 but saving her father from the orc camp might be +1.5 for example). Then you have all possible dialogues for Karen in karen.dialogues. So let's take that jousting competition example, if you talk to Karen during it you could have different responses depending on other variables and her friendship level. For example, at frienship 10 (neutral), 18 (secret crush) and 6 (heavily dislikes):


karen.dialogues.events.jousting[10] = "karen.relationships.boyfriend is participating in the joust. I hope he doesn't get hurt!"


karen.dialogues.events.jousting[18] = "I'll rooting for you. Go get 'em!"


karen.dialogues.events.jousting[6] = "Meh! I hope karen.relationships.boyfriend kicks your ass!"

See how this is very flexible? You can define elements at random ahead of time and insert them in texts. Of course, the syntax is probably all wrong (I don't know JS), but it gets the point across. Also, if you are going to have like 50 possible characters, times 10-20 possible friendship levels, times all the events/places you could talk to them, it's an exponential number of texts to write ahead of time. But it's possible. And it's not like you were going to not have to write them anyway.

Second method is doing it through eventing. RPGM MV doesn't support arrays, so you'll have to use spare variables. In fact, I'm not sure variables can contain text either (Okay, both things I just said are in fact possible but you'd have to use scripts. Without scripts, to the best of my knowledge, they aren't feasible). So a scriptless way you could do this is have a few spare variables you could name as such: Karen_friendship, Karen_dialogues, etc. When you talk to an NPC at an event, a number is input in karen_dialogues and a common event named "karen_speaks" is called. For example the jousting event is worth 19900, so karen_dialogues is set to 19900. Then you add karen_friendship to it. Then in the common event you have a ginormous branching if conditionnal thing and when karen_dialogue is = 19910 (jousting competition + friendship 10), a certain text is printed. You would of course need to have a big excel spreadsheet or something to keep track of all the texts and the number they go along with for every character. I'm not 100% sure you could have for example karen_boyfriend = 12 (12 being = to Rick, for example) and use this to somehow cross reference 12 with some sort of characters database (another big if-conditionnal-branch thing) to input Rick's name in a text, though. A few tests would be required.

Using those variable tricks, you can even store likes and dislikes in advance, etc.


Anyway, just at least know that it's possible. When you're there, if you hit a snag, just ask on the forums and plenty of people will be willing to help you out with the specifics

Now the callendar... thanks to @AcetheSuperVillain words, I think the season approach is great and I can have the season to impact in some core mechanic, like buffs and which maps are accessible

Sounds good.

About the relationship, I like @LaFlibuste idea, I'm going to use partially, the questing influence seems amazing and I think it's fairly possible to achieve.


The points system seems be enough for developing the relationship, it wont be a very deep feature, but will be funny as each NPC will have its personality

Also sounds good. Doesn't need to be very deep. In Harvest Moon games (okay, official disclaimer: I only have played Back to Nature, the PSX Harvest Moon game, so anything I say about Harvest Moon is based on that one. Things might be different in other titles), aside from marriage the friendship system with most other villagers only ends with them sharing their favorite recipe with you. That and flavour texts that make you feel good (or bad). So, not very deep.

I won't (for now) be using player crafted stuff, maybe something like a kitchen or a lab for some buff dishes, but nothing too fancy

A crafting system would really fit awesomely in such a game. But it's also a big can of worms to open, so I can get why you're reluctant. As someone who is not going to put any effort into it, I'd say "go for it", but I'd understand you not doing so

The resources acquired will be used in NPCs for revealing new items, interactions and maybe quests (lore and background), I guess this way the player will have a reason to go back to town

I think resting and restocking would be reason enough to go back to town. Add in events to give an additional incentive and I think it works. And while going back into town, the player could use the time to work on his relationships, especially if there are little bonuses to have every now and then from it. I think you're good on that front. If you want an additional incentive: have the player's backpack have limited space, so he'll eventually have to either give up on some loot or go back more often.

Regarding the buildings, I'm reading toward the default ones related to the core RPG Maker style

Honestly you have a lot of options, either by having buildings on their own maps, have them change through events like Ace said above, I think you can even take bits of map and have some event or code place them on other maps, swap tilesets on the go, etc. So really, lots of options.

The merchant NPCs can vary as I can have lots of versions of the same map to be generated with different NPCs, I'll probabbly be limited by financial aspects (I comission an artist) but this is going to work and be random enough I guess

Commissioning an artist is all well and good, but I'd advise making do with place holders until your game is complete enough to warrant spending money on resources. There are tons of generators and free resources around to create some decent placeholders.

But honestly I think the merchants are good to be fixed so the player can look at the map and know exactly who he wants to interact with

Reading this, I understand that the shop keepers would be bland generic boring NPCs, am I right? I'm not sure I'm in favor of this, if only because it will not leave many useful jobs for the villagers that matters, making them feel artificial, useless slackers in the village. They wouldn't really be a part of its economy and life, you know? Also, a simple weapon shop sign is plenty enough to recognize the shop if you ask me, and the guy standing behind the counter will be a dead giveaway as to who the vendor is. Whether he's a bland generic useless NPC or a character that can change between play-throughs and actually matters in the village's life has very little impact on the player's ability to identify the weapon salesman in my opinion.



So on the whole, your ideas work. I feel my proposition was maybe a bit more complete but they're not SO different in the end and I agree some elements might actually represent a workload you might not be willing to take on. A randomly generating game like a roguelike is a lot of work by itself already, so it's not like it's going to be a walk in the park by any standards. You do the grunt work, you get to decide 

PS: Sorry for the humongous wall of text

 

[Lantiz]

Okay, some thoughts on your ideas. But before I write anything else, I just want to state the followings: this is your project, not mine, and as such you are entitled to make judgement calls about your game's design. The bottom line will sometimes be different preferences and you, as the person who will actually put in all the hard work, should get to pick what will make the cut or not. So take everything I write with a grain of salt

Ofcourse, we are only sharing ideas, don't worry.

I think a crafting system would be more appropriate for an RPG/roguelike, but a farming thing works too, as long as you remember those principles I talked about earlier:
1) Farming is not a core gameplay feature, it's a mini-game or a side thing at best and should be treated as such.
2) Whatever rewards this gives should tie in with the core gameplay feature: adventuring.

Yeah I agree, my idea for farming is really simple, nothing like making gold out of it or something like that.

Note that I spoke a lot about quests earlier. "Quests" need not be formal quests with definite objectives given by a specific NPC. I'm not a huge roguelike player but from my little experience there often are no quests, you are instead thrown somewhere and you have to figure things out and create the narrative by yourself. If I retake my orcs building a dam on the river example, you don't necessarily need to have spoken with the farmer who says "Will you please destroy the orcish dam for a hundred bucks?", maybe you just have an orcish stronghold somewhere next to a dam, you explore the place and you can decide to destroy it by yourself, which prompts a favorable response from villagers. But you might never have been formally sent there on a quest, you just took an initiative. The river might as well have overflown and wrecked the crop or destroyed a house or something, for all you know. It's a much easier way to handle "quests" in a randomized/roguelike environment, I think. Although to be fair a mix of both could be good, I guess. In any event, your idea works, it was just a comment.

It's another good comment. I understand your concern, but from my experience (which is not that much actually), quests in roguelikes happen in two ways:


You get a main quest on a fixed map from fixed npcs, or you find some events on the random maps, like some merchant to escort.


But what I thought was really toward the "favorable response" way, not exactly that but the idea is close.

This works, just think ahead of the reason you have that improving the village thing with X years to do it. A mercenary doesn't sound like an official sent by the king. Then again, maybe the villagers just granted you a plot of land and give themselves 3 years to evaluate if you are a positive influence on the village or if they give you the boot. Just think of something you like, anyway.

Yes! I feel that way will give the player more freedom to make choices, he could be a bad person for instance.

Just maybe have them walk to the nearest exit when they're leaving somewhere the player is because it'd be weird if they just vanished after you finished talking to them because it suddenly is the evening.

This makes a lot of sense, didnt think about this, I'll pay attention, thanks

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "fixed map for calendar events". You mean if for example there is a jousting competition on the calendar, it'll always happen in the town square and the layout will always be the same? Makes sense to me if it's what you were saying. I don't see how it'd be a technical challenge to have the villagers have personalized text for these events, but villagers in Harvest Moon often talk about the event going on while attending it instead of babbling about their relationships, so it could make sense anyway.

This is exactly what I meant, you got that well.

Okay, I'm honestly not sure what your skill level is, so the following is not meant to insult your intelligence if it seems obvious, but from a few comments you've made I think it could help you if I outlined two ways you could build your characters.

No insult taken.


Most of time I say I'm not sure if something is gona work, or how will I adress something, is related to keeping the engine up and running.


What I mean is, almost all my plugins are done, mainly the map generators, and there are some limitations to keep in mind.


Actually I just don't make the graphic assets of the game, everything else is done by me, including the plugins (no sound yet :/ ).


But don't worry.. we are getting along well.


I understand your Idea.


But I'll point some problems to it. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but would (probably) have some issues.


The first thing that comes to mind is to be able to save all that information. The save file would probabbly be too large. I can think of alternatives, but honestly? I'm not sure if the work will be worth.


I'll follow the eventing approach, but I'm not thinking about making something as deep as Harvest Moon...


The familly will mostly be close to each other, so I can have generic texts and simple event branches.


By generic i mean things like "oh sometimes I feel suffocated by my familly".


I don't need many daily texts per dateable (is this word right? lol) NPC, they can have 1 text per day per relationship level, in 7 days a week.


Now I dont need many levels of relationship, lets say 3 levels, so 21 texts per week. It's doable.


I wont need to make then interact too much... for instance, depending on my level of relationship, when I talk to a rival he could say like:


"I wish Karen would smile for me like she does for you", so I just need to have one related person to a dateable NPC.


Another way I often think about to control the level of the relationship, is to answer a question everyday, and change it according to the answer.


As you keep remembering me: "it's not a core feature" xD

Also sounds good. Doesn't need to be very deep. In Harvest Moon games (okay, official disclaimer: I only have played Back to Nature, the PSX Harvest Moon game, so anything I say about Harvest Moon is based on that one. Things might be different in other titles), aside from marriage the friendship system with most other villagers only ends with them sharing their favorite recipe with you. That and flavour texts that make you feel good (or bad). So, not very deep.

 I understand. Back to nature is the best for me [:


Anyway, it's exactly why I think would not be very good to try to make something very deep.


It's just an addon to keep things interesting while on the town map.

I think resting and restocking would be reason enough to go back to town. Add in events to give an additional incentive and I think it works. And while going back into town, the player could use the time to work on his relationships, especially if there are little bonuses to have every now and then from it. I think you're good on that front. If you want an additional incentive: have the player's backpack have limited space, so he'll eventually have to either give up on some loot or go back more often.

Hahaha I'm sure I wont need more incentive.


I'll try like that for now [:

Commissioning an artist is all well and good, but I'd advise making do with place holders until your game is complete enough to warrant spending money on resources. There are tons of generators and free resources around to create some decent placeholders.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

Reading this, I understand that the shop keepers would be bland generic boring NPCs, am I right? I'm not sure I'm in favor of this, if only because it will not leave many useful jobs for the villagers that matters, making them feel artificial, useless slackers in the village. They wouldn't really be a part of its economy and life, you know? Also, a simple weapon shop sign is plenty enough to recognize the shop if you ask me, and the guy standing behind the counter will be a dead giveaway as to who the vendor is. Whether he's a bland generic useless NPC or a character that can change between play-throughs and actually matters in the village's life has very little impact on the player's ability to identify the weapon salesman in my opinion.

Not exactly... I mean the NPC will be always the same, the blacksmith will always be the same, but his familly will change.


It does not mean he'll be a person without a soul lol


About the merchang sign, it's I tottaly forgot about it, but i'll need to figure a way to spawn it on the outer wall of the buiding that is related to the NPC.


I'm not saying it's impossible, again, what I mean is that I'll have to check if it will be possible with the plugins that I've done and the way that I've done.

I agree some elements might actually represent a workload you might not be willing to take on.

Exactly!


Your Ideas are awesome, would be nice ot put it all together, but I feel it would not pay off in the end... 


I guess we got enough simplier ways to keep the player attention with enough randomness.


And thanks to all of you, I think it's going to be fun  

A randomly generating game like a roguelike is a lot of work by itself already, so it's not like it's going to be a walk in the park by any standards. You do the grunt work, you get to decide

Being honest... I think it's better than mapping. I'm not a good maper, or a mapper at all.


Now that the generator plugins are done I'll need to make a few maps only, if I need at all.

PS: Sorry for the humongous wall of text

It's fine, I'll forgive you this time... ok It's a joke xD


Don't worry about that, mines are not so small either...


Well, once again.... thanks a lot.


By the way guys, you can follow my project on my blog 


Fair winds!

 

[LaFlibuste]

Well good luck with your project, seems like you've got the know-how and lots of ideas. Now all that's left is elbow grease

 

[Lantiz]

Thank you so much!


You helped me a lot.

 

[bgillisp]

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